The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die. In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. The pharmaceutical corporations spend billions of dollars to convince all of us to become dependent on their legal drugs, the health insurance companies make billions of dollars by providing as little health care as possible, and they both spend millions of dollars to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. keep the gravy train rolling. Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and patients are not getting the care that they need. At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster. Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. In America today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost you $100,000, and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with medical bills in excess of a million dollars. Even if you do have health insurance, there are usually limits on your coverage, and the truth is that just a single major illness is often enough to push most American families into bankruptcy. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash. Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.

The following are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making scam that is about to collapse…

By 1789, a lot of French people were starving. Their economy had long since deteriorated into a weak, pitiful shell. Decades of unsustainable spending had left the French treasury depleted. The currency was being rapidly debased. Food was scarce, and expensive.

Perhaps most famously, though, the French monarchy was dangerously out of touch with reality, historically enshrined with the quip, “Let them eat cake.”

The Bourbon monarchy paid the price for it, eventually losing their heads in a 1793 execution. But it took the French economy decades to finally recover.

Along the way, the government tried an experiment: issuing a form of paper money. It didn’t matter to the French politicians that every previous experiment with paper money in history had been an absolute disaster.

As French Assemblyman M. Matrineau put it in 1790, “Paper money under a despotism is dangerous. It favors corruption. But in a nation constitutionally governed, which itself takes care in the emission of its notes [and] determines their number and use, that danger no longer exists.”

Translation: This time is different. We’re different. We’re smarter. We won’t suffer the same fate. TRUST US.

Addressing a question yesterday, from Senator Bob Corker, on his “being the biggest dove since World War II” and the “degrading effects that he’s having on society,” Bernanke responded proudly that be believed his “inflation record is the best of any Federal Reserve Chairman in the post-war period.” Of course that is by his measure. We suggest, he and few of his transitory colleagues look at the chart below for a sense of just what his ‘dovishness’ looks like to the rest of the food- and energy-consuming world… or perhaps by ‘best’ he means ‘most’.

CORKER: So I think that, you know, I don’t think there’s any question that you would be the biggest dove, if you will, since World War II. I think it’s something you’re rather proud of…. Just wondering if you — if ya’ll talk at all in your meetings about the degrading effect that’s having on our society.

BERNANKE: You called me a dove. Well, maybe in some respects I am, but on the other hand, my inflation record is the best of any Federal Reserve Chairman in the post-war period, or at least one of the best, about two percent average inflation.

Following on the heels of Merkel’s adviser Lars Feld’s comments, German finance minister Schaeuble has raised concerns over the results of the Italian elections. His comment that,“I never said the euro crisis was over,” stands in contrast to the claims of Monti, Draghi, Lagarde, Barroso, and Sarkozy who all have. along with the market’s “doubts that a stable government can be formed,” raises the risk of turmoil spreading to other euro countries. Schaeuble commented further that, “now it is up to those who were elected in Italy on Sunday to form a stable government. The faster they do this, the quicker the uncertainty will be overcome.” The problem, as Reuters reports, appears to be not just Italy’s public dissension over Germany’s demands for austerity but his French counterpart’s comments that “austerity has gone far enough,” to which the German rebuked, “France must also do more here, Hollande knows this and so does Pierre Moscovici.” Tension is certainly rising in the depression-addled union, even as Draghi explains – it’s all ok, he promises.

Barroso (The Guardian): “we can say that the existential threat against the euro has essentially been overcome”

For all the groundless, starry-eyed optimism permeating Europe’s bureaucratic corridors of the fading oligarchy these days (because this time is not like every other time that, too, was different), there has always existed one sure, never-fail antidote: Germany, which without fail has managed to ground Europe any time its delusion of grandure hit escape velocity. Sure enough, while all the statist soothsayers who threatened with armageddon if the outcome of the Italian elections happened to be precisely the one that transpired, were stuck in backpedal mode, and scrambling to calm nerves that all shall be well after all, one person who refuses to play by the script is Lars Feld, member of panel of economic advisers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tomorrow says the euro crisis is to return shortly and “with a vengeance” as capital loss will lead to higher risk premiums for Italy’s interest rates.

The Italian economy would not find their way out of the recession, according to the pessimistic assessment by Lars Feld: “The sustainability of Italian public finances is in jeopardy. The euro crisis will therefore return shortly with a vengeance.”

This letter is a few days old, but is very important for every American to be aware of. Essentially, Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster Barack Obama’s nominee for the CIA, John Brennan, due to his refusal to answer a simple question:

Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken also was prescient:

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

But this is not about Mr. Mencken. Rather it is about some unknown individual who committed the following to the email world:

Food for thought…

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally … you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion … you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots. Continue reading »

OKLAHOMA CITY – A significant winter storm has brought as much as 22 inches of snow to parts of Oklahoma on Monday, according to the News 9 Weather Team.At the request of Gov. Mary Fallin, Monday afternoon, Lt. Governor Todd Lamb declared a State of Emergency for 56 Oklahoma counties due to the excessive snow and severe weather. The executive order allows state agencies to make emergency purchases related to disaster relief and preparedness. It is also a first step toward seeking federal assistance, if it’s needed.

The area just west of Alva, Oklahoma, received 22 inches of snow during the storm.

The Air Force has some bad news for the pilots of its F-22 Raptor stealth fighters: Your planes are going to make you feel crappy and there’s not much anyone can do about it. And the message to the maintainers of the radar-evading jet is even more depressing. Any illness they feel from working around the Raptor is apparently all in their heads, according to the Air Force.

Those admissions, buried in newly released Congressional records, represent the latest twist in the years-long saga of the F-22′s faulty oxygen system, which since at least 2008 has been choking pilots, leading to confusion, memory loss and blackouts — combined known as hypoxia — that may have contributed to at least one fatal crash. Ground crews have also reported growing sick while working around F-22s whose engines are running.

The Air Force claims its has a handle on the in-flight blackouts. All 180 or so F-22s are having faulty filters removed and new backup oxygen generators installed. There have also been changes to the G-suits pilots wear. But the Air Force says the alterations won’t do anything to fix the so-called “Raptor cough,” a chronic condition afflicting almost all F-22 pilots.

Three priests and former priest report Cardinal Keith O’Brien to Vatican over claims stretching back 33 years

Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour stretching back 30 years.The four, from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, have complained to nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain, and demanded O’Brien’s immediate resignation. A spokesman for the cardinal said that the claims were contested.

O’Brien, who is due to retire next month, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, condemning homosexuality as immoral, opposing gay adoption, and most recently arguing that same-sex marriages would be “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved”. Last year he was named “bigot of the year” by the gay rights charity Stonewall.

Tony Rooke represented himself at Horsham Magistrates’ Court in Sussex

Told inspector on visit in May 2012 that he would not be paying licence fee

Rooke said he was withholding fee under Section 15 of Terrorism Act 2000

This states it’s an offence for someone to provide funds used for terrorism

He said he didn’t want to give money to an organisation ‘funding terrorism’

Rooke said BBC claimed World Trade Centre 7 fell 20 minutes before it did

But judge made Rooke pay £200 costs and gave him conditional discharge

A 49-year-old man refused to pay his TV licence because he believed the BBC covered up facts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Tony Rooke, who represented himself today at Horsham Magistrates’ Court in West Sussex, said he did not want to give money to an organisation ‘funding the practice of terrorism’.

Rooke, who admitted owning a TV and watching it without a licence, was found guilty of using an unlicensed set, given a six-month conditional discharge and told to pay £200 costs.

He was visited in May 2012 by an inspector after withdrawing his licence in March, but said he was withholding the funds under the Terrorism Act.

Section 15 of the 2000 Act states that it is an offence for someone to invite another to provide money, intending that it should be used, or having reasonable cause to suspect that it may be used, for terrorism purposes.

‘I am withholding all funds from the BBC, the Government and subsidiaries under Section 15 of the Terrorism Act,’ he told the inspector.

Constitutional Sheriffs sent an email stating, “I have added the names of the following 61 Florida County Sheriffs [who] joined the previous six Florida County Sheriffs to announce that they will not enforce laws that violate the Constitution or infringe on the rights of the people to own firearms.”

This means all of Florida’s county sheriffs have now signed the pledge, the first state to achieve 100% compliance with the 2nd Amendment. The list is bi-partisan.

The following Florida Sheriffs have taken a stand to defend the second amendment: Continue reading »

The Obama administration’s classified legal memos justifying targeted killings contain potentially shady protocols with foreign governments and “case-specific” details of strikes, two sources aware of their contents told Krisitn Roberts and Michael Hirsch of the National Journal.The accords with foreign governments — which include Pakistan and Yemen — are a key element excluded from the Department of Justice (DoJ) “white paper.”

A legal expert outside the government “who is intimately familiar with the contents of the memos” told the Journal that targeted-killing memos written by the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) are being withheld to protect this information.

The Senate and House intelligence committees have only been allowed to examine four of the nine OLC memos.

The expert told the Journal that the administration believes Congress would leak the information to the public, which could be extremely embarrassing to the U.S. and its foreign partners given the unpopularity of the drone program and any legal or ethical liberties taken in the agreements.

Disciplinary reports published by a news outlet reveal that FBI employees have a nasty habit of sending each other sexually explicit messages — from both personal as well as government-issued cellphones— forcing the agency to comment on the matter.

“The instances described are not unlike those that occur among employees of any other large agency or organization in the country,” a spokesperson for the FBI Office of Public Affairs said in a statement to NBC News. “It is important to note that in an organization of more than 36,000 employees, these disciplinary incidents involve a fraction of one percent of FBI employees.”

Dating drug dealers, harassing ex-boyfriends with naked pictures, and pointing guns at pet dogs: these were just a few of the offences committed recently by serving FBI agents, according to internal documents.

Disciplinary files from the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility record an extraordinary range of transgressions that reveal the chaotic personal lives of some of America’s top law enforcers.

One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress’s house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent “drunk and uncooperative” and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.

A woman e-mailed a “nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend’s wife” and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.

It would appear that someone tripped and flipped the algo switch this morning as the ubiquitous morning slamdown has morphed into a take-off. Perhaps it is no coincidence that every Muppet’s favorite banker (cough Goldman Sachs cough) opined on Gold’s coming weakness yesterday and that hedge funds are the least exposed to the precious metals on record, which as everyone BUT Goldman knows, is the traditional signal that it is a time to buy. Actually we take that back: Goldman certainly knew it, which is why it has been urgently advising its clients to sell… To Goldman.

Two powerful dairy organizations, The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), are petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to allow aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to be added to milk and other dairy products without a label.

The FDA currently allows the dairy industry to use “nutritive sweeteners” including sugar and high fructose corn syrup in many of their products. Nutritive sweeteners are defined as sweeteners with calories.

This petition officially seeks to amend the standard of identification for milk, cream, and 17 other dairy products like yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, sour cream, and others to provide for the use of any “safe and suitable sweetener” on the market.

They claim that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners would promote healthy eating and is good for school children. Continue reading »